Until the End of Time
by lookingforthestars
Summary: "He works. And he works. And he doesn't imagine the possibility that this is all for nothing, that he could fail. Because people only fail if they give up. If he works hard enough, long enough, he'll get it. He makes progress, so he keeps going." Chase in the nine years after Gert dies.


**Wow, I REALLY became some Gertchase trash after that finale. I always shipped them, but the time travel storyline hit me pretty hard and I think it just made their story so much deeper and more intense to me. So. Here's some mega angst about the path Chase's life takes after Gert dies. (I am, of course, listening to "Ocean Eyes" on repeat while I write it.)**

Everyone thinks they'll have more time.

Chase always thought there would be more time. Why wouldn't he? They've been beaten, bruised, taken so many hits, always gotten back up. Broken limbs, concussions, nothing they couldn't handle. Nothing he hadn't already experienced playing lacrosse or on one of his father's bad days.

To teenagers, life seems endless. He realizes that now. Death just seems so far away, the end to a long and hopefully satisfying life. A life that he had only just started to imagine, the picture solidifying in his mind, when everything was torn away from him.

He wasted so much time. He's not even sure for what, now. Hanging out with his idiotic lacrosse "friends," drinking booze he didn't like the taste of, talking to girls he couldn't listen to for more than five seconds before tuning out.

Leaving to make peace with his sick dad, or at least that was the excuse, to cover up that he was exhausted and overwhelmed and unprepared for the weight of taking care of the group. He was just a stupid teenager. What did he know about caring for a family?

It wasn't like he'd had a great role model to teach him how to do it.

Those are the two periods in his life he regrets the most, and it's not hard to see the common thread.

He wasted so much time. So many moments that could have been memories of her that are now just hazy blank spots he either can't remember or doesn't want to.

So much time he could have been proving he was good enough for Gert…to her and to himself.

Somehow, he thinks, losing Amy should have made death more real. Should have reminded him that life isn't guaranteed, even for someone young, and maybe it should have motivated him to make his life meaningful, surround himself with the people he cared about.

But he did the opposite. They all did. Splintering, hiding, wasting time pretending they didn't know each other. Until they were brought together by something awful and entirely out of their control.

Chase wonders if they ever would have ever reconnected otherwise. If their lives would have just continued on separate paths until they forgot each other completely.

Sometimes he wishes for that, because Gert would still be alive.

Other times, selfishly, he doesn't. Because he can't imagine a life where he never knew what it was like to be loved by her.

He didn't think he would fall in love at seventeen, because that was stupid, right? It was never real, at that age. It never lasted.

Sometimes it did. Sometimes it lasted forever, far past the point where it made sense for it to last anymore, and it just kept going.

Chase doesn't remember what it was like the first few days after he lost her. It's a blur. Molly says he wouldn't let go of her body for a long time, until Dale and Stacey had pulled themselves together enough to convince him that they needed to lay Gert to rest. Someone washed the blood off him in the shower, he doesn't even remember who, and there was a small funeral, just them because who else would Gert have wanted there? Nobody.

He vaguely remembers Old Lace destroying things in the hostel for a while, remembers people trying to convince him to eat, remembers laying in bed crying until he not so much fell asleep but passed out from exhaustion. Remembers the dreams that forced him awake, made him relive the realization that she wasn't with him over and over and over again.

None of it felt real.

Because Gert was invincible. She was so strong, so determined, so…he doesn't actually have words to describe how he sees her, because he's never known anyone else like her.

Someone that strong can't be gone.

Everyone tells him that Gert would want him to move on, to be happy. He tries. He doesn't date, because he knows he can never find anything that means more, and he's not ready to settle for less. But he gets his GED, gets a job, spends time with Molly and Karolina. Karolina knows Nico is alive, but she's still lost her in every way that matters, so there is some common ground there.

But the feeling never changes. The feeling that this shouldn't have happened. The hatred he has for himself for letting it happen. The knowledge that he can't move on because deep down, he doesn't want to. He feels like he's letting her down if he does.

Chase isn't alone in that. He knows that too. Everyone who loses someone they love feels the same guilt and eventually things get better, even if they never stop being hard. He tries to think about the day that things will get better and lets it carry him.

And then one day, it occurs to him that maybe he's not like everyone else.

Maybe he can change it.

It's such a stupid idea, such a longshot, that he never even tells Molly. He lies about what he's working on all day and all night, and he feels bad about the sadness on her face when he isolates himself from her, but he tells himself that it'll be worth it for her to see Gert again.

He isolates himself from everyone. Everyone except his mother. He confides in her, and she helps him, and she doesn't tell him it's impossible because she's in a fairly impossible situation herself, so the word doesn't have much meaning for her.

When he's worked himself so hard that his vision starts to blur, she shuts everything down and tells him to go to sleep.

When he's stuck on something and frustrated as hell, she talks to him about his childhood, recalls memories of Gert to help him get unstuck, help him not give up.

She wants him to move on and have a life, too. He can see it. But she knows he won't, so she chooses to help him, because now she's in the Algorithm and has all the time in the world.

He only wavers when Molly begs him, insists that Gert wouldn't want him to shut the world out. Wouldn't want his life to end when hers did. He doesn't know if that's true. It seems like, if the situation was reversed, he would want Gert to live and be happy and not think about him every waking second of every day.

But that's the difference. Gert was an amazing person independent of him, without him. She had the power to change the world by herself, and the fact that she didn't need him was what made her _wanting_ him even more incredible.

Chase wasn't like that. He was a better person with her, because of her. She made him care about things, and not pretend that he didn't because it was embarrassing and vulnerable to care. She brought out the good in him and it was so easy to be there whenever she needed him. Now that she's gone, he's cold and closed off again, and he doesn't know how to be that other person anymore.

So, he works. And he works. And he doesn't imagine the possibility that this is all for nothing, that he could fail. Because people only fail if they give up. If he works hard enough, long enough, he'll get it. He makes progress, so he keeps going.

If it works – _when_ it works – then he'll be gone. And he's okay with that. He doesn't like this version of himself anyway. He's happy enough to know that there's another him in another timeline who will get to live a full life with Gert, if he's not an idiot and appreciates what he has and doesn't screw it up.

He doesn't want to die, no one does, but it doesn't feel like dying. It feels like…hitting reset. Waking up from a dream and realizing all the terrible stuff that happened was in your brain, it wasn't real.

He's so close. He'll be finished any day, he can feel it.

They never had enough time.

Now, maybe, they can.


End file.
